Cool January air blew across my face, as I walked through a deserted city street. It felt I was walking on the road to eternity, all alone. I looked ahead, couldn’t see anyone on the road. I looked back, same was the case. As I walked the light from the street light dimmed, I continued walking, and kept my eyes fixed on the road. I had hardly travelled ten metres, I heard a fluttering sound. I looked around...I couldn’t see anything. I took one more step, the sound got louder and louder with each forthcoming step. I wondered what it might be. I don’t have a clue why I did it, but I suddenly looked up, and the scene made me both proud and disgusted.
I saw our tri-colour fluttering with all its glory in the moonlight. The soft moon light seemed to have bathed the tri-colour; the whole scene looked so resplendent that I was nearly carried away in memories of the martyrs from those Bollywood movies. Those people of India, standing bravely against the British guns with the same Tri-Coloured flag, proudly held high in their hands. A scene from Jaliyan Wala Bagh... People crying, wailing. Kids, Women, Men lying on the ground, bathed in blood. Some shot at their chest, some eyes; and some had their heads opened. Voices echoed in my head, voices in grave pain barely able to chant the holy hymn of “Vande Mataram”. Countless were injured, beyond recovery...many more dead. Millions of families left mourning on the death people from their kin. Millions more burning and burying the bodies of their own children with blood soaked eyes. Millions of innocent lives lost over a span of hundreds of years. Yelling of the farmers whose family’s members couldn’t take hunger and left their bodies. Hundreds of great leaders who loved this country and its soil.
And here we are; same Indian people and the same Tri-colour. The day was so called The Republic day of India. The same Tri-colour abandoned lonely fluttering in the night’s sky, which seemed like paying homage to its holy sons and daughters whose blood constituted each and every thread in it. That moment my heart cramped. I felt ashamed of myself and those people who remembered to hoist the flag in the morning... but forgot to lower it at sunset. I swiftly moved to that poorly decorated pole and lowered the flag, folded it neatly and kept it the pocket of my jacket near my cramping heart. I walked to my apartment slowly, still lost in the echoes of the Holy hymn.
As I opened my cupboard and kept the flag neatly in my bag, there was only one question on my mind, “Responsible citizens of the sovereign state of India, are we?”
I leave the same question for you; take 2 minutes out for those people who shed their blood for this country, and ask those heavenly souls to pardon us for our sins.
I hereby leave you with a song i love.. play it,think over.
Vande Mataram
Jai Hind, Vande Mataram!
